Coinage Problem

Solomons' Money

Chinese Trading Causes Coinage Problem

From Our Own Correspondent

Tulagi, Aug. 1.

r pHE question of what is happening to * the thousands of pounds’ worth of Australian silver coins imported into the Solomons, is still unanswered.

In Gizo, where retail prices have been reduced to the exact level of wholesale, it might be expected that every penny of cash imported would go right back over the counter. Yet importations of silver are seldom sufficient to last between steamers.

The ready explanation is hoarding: but that will not stand investigation. It explains only a small percentage, as it always did.

The only explanation that will bear scrutiny is that, in spite of uneconomic price reductions, the cash trade, and the cash, are going to the Chinese, and so out of the Group. It is a bold retailer who thinks that he can out-retail the Chinese.

The question: “What will we use for money?” has not been solved by the influx of New Guinea coins, with their funny little hole in the middle. The new coins are not specially welcomed. Tax collec tors are not keen on this “foreign” money and what won’t pay a tax is not much use to the Solomon Islander.

The only New Guinea coins wanted here seem to be the pennies with King Edward’s inscription on them, and they, of course, are not floating about.

Mr. Duncan Cook, Medical Officer of Health for North Auckland, New Zea land, has returned to Whangarei after having spent five weeks on Pitcairn Is land. He made a comprehensive investi gation of the health of the Islanders at the request of the High Commissioner for the Western Pacific.